The Candidate Experience: Are Companies Listening? [Infographic]

As a recruiter, understanding your candidate experience is essential. As a company it is vital. Not only will a bad candidate experience make you lose out on the top talent in your field, it will also affect your sales, brand and performance as a whole.

One Mystery Applicant survey found that a mere 19% of candidates surveyed were more likely to buy from or use the services of the company they had most recently applied to. And when you consider that 38% of our surveyed applicants stated they were less likely to buy from or use the company’s products or services after their job seeking experience, a worrying pattern emerges. This doesn’t just suggest that their candidate experience was sub-standard but also presents a poor reflection of how the company’s brand was portrayed.

These statistics demonstrate how little companies are capitalising on their candidate’s experience. But do they even realise this? Our survey suggests that some companies may only think they know what’s going on.

With the current economic climate escalating the number of job applications companies receive, and the popularity of social media platforms flourishing, company’s cannot afford to ignore the candidate opinion.

Check out the infographic below for more on what candidates are thinking and why it’s essential to ask…

Right on, Laura. I do some corporate lecturing about recruiting. I am constantly reminding human resources and hiring managers that they may be the only person that a candidate meets from their company. As such, the impression they leave with the candidate is the impression the candidate will have of the company. A nice, polite interview and good corporate follow up can only generate positive feelings and response, even if the candidate does not get the job. I have even wrote in one of my Advertising Age columns that compani...

You do miss a couple of big factors in fairness. Take the recent example of having a generic "administration assistant" post online for less than 24 hours.

When you recieve literally hundreds of application's for this position - when less than 15% of these are even valid, or have bothered to read the job advert it is likely going to be the reamining 85% that have recieved a less than ideal experience.

For those 85%, flip it round to a recruiter's perspective - when you recieve application's from people who have clearly either not read the application, are not in a position to commence the position, or are clearly unsuitable. Add to these those candidates and job seekers, who fire out a bog-standard CV that they don't even tweak slightly for different position's, then you wonder why they feel they have not recieved a response directed at them personally?

My responses to these are very similar, those who are unsuitable will ALL get an email informing them that they have been unsuitable and therefore rejected, but the infographic article is still very misleading.

Thank you for your feedback Daniel, other viewpoints are always appreciated. I'd just like to clarify a couple of points though.

The data shown in the infographic comes from an applicant survey we have carried out and is in no way meant to be misleading.

Whilst your experience may not be an uncommon one among recruiters, especially with so many people currently out of work due to the economic climate, through our research we have found that regardless of the quality of the application, the experience each candidate receives during their application process influences their impression of the company both from an employment point of view and as a consumer. This is exactly why Mystery Applicant was created; to help monitor the candidate experience and encouragingly, we often find companies are pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback that candidates give.

Thanks again for your feedback. Keep a look out for more updates and infographics in the future!